Downtime
by cdewinter78
Summary: The clock is ticking... Dean is trying to use his time wisely, in the aftermath of AHBL, he tries to cope with events. After all, how can he make Sammy see the Deal made sence if, behind the mask, Dean himself was still breaking.


**A/N;** This was my first try at Fan-fiction, its set after the season two finale. What can I say I was inspired by Jensen!! I know it's practically pre-historic right now but AHBL Pt 2 is a classic and I was as awe struck as everyone else at the level of talent those Winchester boys showed - so much so that I actually dared to post!

Downtime

Watching, waiting ... For many things in life Dean Winchester just doesn't have the inclination. Smelling the flowers, watching the grass grow (and then needing to cut it), relationships, building up his own business, having a family, following Lost on TV, taking out a savings option for more than a year's length. These things acknowledged time and progress, forward momentum and a future. All of which are luxuries Dean can't afford or look forward to.

In the frozen Oregon night, he is watching from the Impala's drivers seat - waiting for _it_ to show its face - so he could blow it off. This was his only anticipation now, the current hunt, then the one after that and after that. All the way down the line till one of them takes him out before he becomes the marked fox in a Hell Hound hunt. He muses on this for a while. If one of the creatures he and his brother Sam dispatch on a regular basis, got the drop on him, would he still be escorted to the netherworld on the Hell Hound express?! Dean couldn't imagine those puppies would appreciate his rollover and play dead antics. He shivered a little, the sensation of snapping jaws ghosts across his imagination.

The thought of Sam drew his eyes, like a reflex to his brothers comatose form in the passengers seat. Unconscious Sam always seemed smaller and more fragile than waking, walking, talking ginormatron Sam. Dude just **had** to keep growing after fifteen - too damned stubborn by half! Dean grinned to himself skirting through all the dopey arguments he had picked, just to get a rise out of Sam. Good times.

The smile faded - _these times_, however, were marked, weighed and accounted for. Dean had to admit he enjoyed these reprieves from Sam's valiant, heartbreaking and (hopefully) fruitless search to find the deal breaker for Dean's pact with the Crossroads Demon. Dean did not want to die like this ... dragged to hell and not going out on his own two feet... but something in his assaulted, twisted mind screamed sweet release at him. How fucked up was the Winchester experience?! Life; that they fight so hard for, bleed for, sacrifice and eventually die for, shuts them out.

Dean remembers with agonizing clarity what motivated him to make that deal. He reaches inside his jacket for the silver flask that Bobby gave him, which no longer carries Holy Water. The flask, he tells himself, gets under Sam's radar and also works to get that God damned horror show out of his head for a while. He believed that seeing Sam up and around; walking, talking in full IMAX glory, puppy dog eyed and bitch-face a plenty; would drive those images from his tortured memory. He was wrong. Now that Sam knows the stakes, he is pissed as hell at how quickly Dean slung his soul into the pot.

Wishing for the millionth time that week, that he did emo moments, or had Oprah's way with words- Dean knows he could make Sam see... armed with these. What was he supposed to do?! Kneeling in the mud, crushing grip on his baby brother, he could practically feel the lights going dark. Sucking in a breath like he is rolling with the punches, he takes another tug on the flask, deeper this time. Sam's body was weightless, feather light, like that night in Kansas, as he moved him from the mud and rain, to that dingy mattress. God, how he had wanted to lay the fuck down and die right next to him. Curl into Sam and ... just expire. Dean sobbed in a way that made Bobby flee the premises. He remembers very little about the two hours before Bobby left. He has vague impressions, like flashes in a movie trailer about someone else's life; Bobby eyeing the knife that Dean had David Copperfielded from somewhere... Bobby exchanging a liter bottle of Jack for said knife, with relief in his eyes and a grimace on his face... Bobby grabbing Dean in a gruff embrace as the dam bursts and Dean wails like a twelve year old girl...

Dean starts at that, taking a convulsive swallow. Every time he went to that place he peeled back a little something more. He exhales slowly, pushing the bubbles of memory down savagely. He doesn't, ever need to go there again. He smiles sardonically and whispers fiercely "I'd rather die". Dean somehow thinks Sam would not see the funny side. Sam's capacity for fun had never been large, in Dean's opinion, but in the aftermath of the Deal, he was more somber than ever. He rarely laughed, and, even as Dean sometimes got round to feeling relieved, Sam seemed to become more burdened. Dark circles under the eyes from hours of internet surfing (and not the good kind), no appetite and monosyllabic conversation (Dean's patented mode of communication), were all regular characteristics of post Deal Sam.

The irony had not escaped Dean. Even as he was foregoing his time- he was having the time of his life. Sam on the other hand, seemed resigned as a prison lifer, to a hellish existence of guilt and desperation. Dean had not intended Sam to pick up his own discarded card. He had rather hoped Sam would shuffle the deck and see what aces fell out... Law school, a wife, 2.5 kids (what the hell happened to the .5 of kid number 3 - scary what passed for happiness in the normal world!!). But as Dean's time ran down it was Sam's spirit that seemed to be departing? How the hell could Dean have that?!

They had argued and fought a little; Sam throwing the predictable "selfish bastard" label around, which to Sam's disgust, Dean had swooped to pick up and disarm.

"Your damn right I am Sammy- I have never asked for anything from you, from Dad... maybe I should have?! Then I wouldn't feel so frigging crappy, when I get to forfeit everything I have been clinging on to!!"

But Sam did not get it. Could not get it. Dean understood why, he'd seen the landscape from Sammy's side of things, when Dad had taken matters into his own hands. What Dean had done was different. He had chosen a path, a course of action... who else was left to confer with? Dean kept coming back to the same question now as he had on that day. The words appeared to have branded themselves to his tongue, the way Sammy's lifeless face was burned onto his closed eyelids...

"What was I supposed to do?!"

And there it is, laid shamelessly buck-naked - life without Sam could only end one way. Bobby had sensed it when he had traded a damn good bottle of JD for Dean's favorite hunting knife. In Dean's heart of hearts, he knew that the Deal was the most proactive suicide plan he could muster. Dean had told a kid named Lucas once that he thought his Mother watched him, and the kicker was that, that was the truth. Mary Winchester was the nearest to "Angel" that Dean got. He really did "try to be brave, for her" - he really did.How could he stop doing the thing that his brain checked off right after; looking out for Sammy and breathing? That mantra "Mom's watching you" had gotten him through so much in the early years, that it became his prayer -

"Please don't let her see me fall".

In a funny way - Dean had found religion, but perhaps not the way his Mother had hoped. His belief was in his family, and he would gladly rack it up and take it out for the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. But what had been left of his faith? On that day... not a damned thing. Where had his penance and abstinence (he'd skip the celibacy concept... because Dean was **so** **not** a zealot!!) gotten him?! He'd lost all of them anyway. All of them, even the ghost as it happened, and _**how the hell**_ do you manage that, unless you were a born Winchester?!

Sam murmured in his sleep, reminding Dean that he was on the look out for something large and toothy.

"Whoa boy" he chided himself "impending death is no excuse to get sloppy!"

Casting a glance between Sam and the rest of the world, Dean was torn between letting his brother rest and getting ready to face the creepy ass-ed critter. He knew Sammy didn't have his regular vision- o'clock to wake him at opportune moments like these. Deans brow creased as he marvels at yet another irony in life after Sam's death. No yellow-eyed Demon meant no skull splitting visions for Sam; should have meant Miller time for them both. However that yellow eyed son of a bitch, had planted one last parting shot in Dean's brain that kept going off like an alarm.

"Are you sure that what you bought back is 100 , authentic Sammy?!"

Growling, he unconsciously checks the safety on his .45.

"Dean" a parched and groggy voice calls him.

Jumping slightly, he very deliberately pulls his finger off the trigger.

"Samantha" he hisses "if you have to complain about the pea in your mattress, do it quietly will ya?!"

Sam levels one of those Armageddon looks at him and at the same time reaches for his waistband, were he'd stored his Glock.

"I don't need details about what you and your companions _**actually do**_, in this car jerk" Sam grunts.

Under the pretence of scoping out the area Dean turns away from his brother, a maniacal grin splits his face. This critter was dust - Dean was not even sweating this one, amongst the list of battles ahead this was just a skirmish. Unluckily for the chupacabra Sam was a grouchy bitch, with a deadly shot, even when woken up. Luckily for Dean knowing this and the million other things that made Sam, Sam ... was what was going to see him through. To have things as they always were between the two of them, to enjoy these moments, this form of downtime... it was as good as it got. And for now that was good enough.

**End Note-** Thanks for taking the time to read this - thank you ten times over if you decide to let me know what you think.


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